The Unraveling Heart

In centering the Marathi song tradition of women laboring at the flour grind mill, Deshmukh innovatively writes anew the history of Indian literature. The Unraveling Heart constructs a shared genealogy between elite South Asian vernacular literature and the oral compositions of women and non-elite castes traced over hundreds of years in India. This book has no parallel in South Asia Studies. – Christian Lee Novetzke, coauthor of The Yoga of Power: Yoga as Political Thought and Practice in IndiaMadhuri Deshmukh sheds a brilliant light on the lives and songs of women enslaved, marginalized and forgotten over centuries. Deshmukh follows the verses and poetics of the thirteenth century Janabai down to contemporary grind-mill working women songs in the Godavari River Valley in Maharashtra. An argument about language, about persisting, and about the solo voice of the woman in history and memory, The Unraveling Heart is a major literary achievement – Manan Ahmed Asif, author of The Loss of Hindustan: The Invention of IndiaIn this authoritative and beautifully reasoned work, Madhuri Deshmukh takes us to the grindstone labor of millions of Indian women. She shows us how Mahadaise and Janabai in their early grindstone ovīs laid the groundwork for some of the most influential aspects of Marathi bhakti expression. In doing so, Deshmukh questions the confines of “literature” established by men, not just in India but elsewhere. Don’t be surprised if you meet Howard Thurman and Bob Dylan along with Wordsworth and Virginia Woolf. This is a book not just for India but the world. – John Stratton Hawley, Claire Tow Professor of Religion, Barnard College, Columbia UniversityThis is a ground-breaking exploration of the relationship between oral and written literature in one of the major languages of India. Showing how songs that women sing while grinding grain are tightly interwoven with other kinds of poetry considered “high” literature, Deshmukh provides a striking new perspective that will be of enduring value. – Anne Feldhaus, Distinguished Foundation Professor of Religious Studies, Arizona State University

Madhuri Deshmukh is professor of English at Oakton College.